Swords of Arabia: Betrayal by Anthony Litton Page B

across a small colony of desert hares, one of the prime targets for the savage falcons, and a good start to the day’s sport.
    Everyone quickly quietened as they removed the hoods from their falcons’ heads. Uncovered, the birds were ready at a moment’s notice to be unleashed. Once free, the raptors, one of the most perfect killing machines nature had yet devised, would race high and ever higher, streaking into the sky’s vast, blue emptiness until they were scarcely a dot in their owner’s eye. When they sighted their prey, often almost out of sight, far, far ahead of the hunting party itself, then, then would come the stunning reverse and they would flash downwards at ever increasing speed. The winged killers would be scarcely visible to their viewers’ eyes as they would be far, far away across the desert. Then, appearing only as a briefly seen shadow from below, their claws would rip down through fur, or feathers and plunge deep into the skin and down on into the flesh of their victim. For, once released, they rarely, if ever, failed to kill.
    “Come, Talal, release your bird and let’s see how he performs!” Nasir said pointing to the sleek, beautiful, bird, its feathers of varying shades of brown, on his nephew’s wrist. It had been a gift from Nasir himself to his young kinsman, who had been overjoyed at the expensive present, unaware of his uncle’s ulterior motive. For, by the long hours of patient training the young bird had needed, Nasir hoped indirectly to help the boy develop the patience he would also need once he eventually came of age and became in fact, as well as in name, the ruler of his father’s kingdom. The magnificent looking bird was a saker , one of the most prized of the falcons used in Arabia. It was its first outing after the many, many weeks Talal had spent in slowly, very slowly, getting it used to his arm, and to himself as its owner.
    Talal shook his head and said courteously. “No, as our guest, Captain Celik must be allowed to unleash his bird first.”
    Kerim nodded in response to the courtesy and, seeing that the slaves working ahead had flushed out the prey, he unleashed his bird, a fierce, beautiful, strongly marked peregrine , with a word of encouragement. Though an older bird than his host’s it was also on its first outing of the season, only just coming out of its annual moult some weeks after the saker . Kerim was keen to see if its hunting skills had carried over from the previous year, when it had been one of his most prized hunters. He knew that, unlike the larger sakers , his bird was very unlikely to attack on the ground; a bird of the air, it preferred to attack other winged creatures whilst still in flight. Today though, she would play her part in harassing the hares and other game until the fleet-footed Saluki caught up with them and killed the quarry.
    They all watched transfixed as Kerim’s bird soared into the sky, its strong wings making little of the effort needed to rise so high and so swiftly. Then, far ahead of the riders, it saw its prey, as the hares, now flushed out and hemmed in by the attendants, scurried in increasingly frightened, zigzagging spurts, desperately seeking to live. Then the raptor swooped into its plunging dive.
    As expected it didn’t dive onto and kill any of the frightened quarry, its comparatively small size precluded it doing that safely. Instead it swooped down and flew just above the heads of the increasingly frightened and disorientated hares until, exhausted they fell easy prey to the salukis , whose strong jaws set in narrow, long nosed, heads, made short work of killing their prey.
    Kerim’s family had links across Europe and he had flown his hawks in many of the European countries, but he loved the falconry of Arabia most of all. His blood raced as they swept across the flat desert floor, the sand raising in spurts under the hooves of their horses, his heart responding to the savagery and the stark simplicity of the